Government documents obtained by the Partnership
for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) through its FOIA records requests reveal that the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS), an agency created after the September 11
attacks under the rubric of combating terrorism, conducts daily monitoring of
peaceful, lawful protests as a matter of policy.

Functioning as a secret
political police force
against people participating in lawful, peaceful free speech activity,
the
heavily redacted documents show that the DHS “Threat Management
Division”
directed Regional Intelligence Analysts to provide a “Daily Intelligence
Briefing” that includes a category of reporting on “Peaceful Activist
Demonstrations” along with “Domestic Terrorist Activity.” (p. 68)

The PCJF has obtained thousands of pages of documents pursuant to its Freedom of
Information Act demands and made them available for public viewing. The newly
obtained documents show coordination and intelligence monitoring by the DHS, the FBI, the NYPD and other law
enforcement agencies of “Occupy-type” protests.

The documents show the routine use of Fusion
Centers for intelligence gathering on peaceful demonstrations as well as the
use of DHS’ “Mega Centers” for collection of surveillance information on
demonstrations.

One document also shows the DHS engaging
in what appears to be “off the books” intelligence gathering as one DHS agent
writes in response to a request for information on the Occupy movement in New
England, “This meeting should be finishing up soon and I'll have access to a
non-DHS computer that will allow me to do more looking.” (p. 6)

The first trove of FBI documents obtained by the
PCJF in December 2012 exposed that the FBI treated the Occupy movement, even
before the first tent went up in lower Manhattan, as a potential criminal and terrorist
threat in spite of the fact that the FBI acknowledged that the OWS organizers
explicitly called for peaceful protests.

The release and PCJF analysis of the documents in December received
significant media attention.

In preparation for planned protests in New York
City on October 15, 2011, the DHS documents show coordination between federal
and local authorities to use New York City’s permitting scheme to frustrate,
obstruct or stop free speech activities.

In the case of the New York City protest, the
documents reveal how even the most elementary exercise for conducting a lawful
protest activity was the subject of information
sharing and cooperation between federal and local law enforcement agencies.
This was the case when the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement sought a permit for a
march with the purpose, as the DHS states, “to recognize the African slaves
used to build Wall Street.” DHS reports on how the NYPD denied the sound permit
for the planned activity and how the permit application was “kicked back and
forth by the City, GSA and NPS. …” (p. 35)

As the federal and local governments and law
enforcement agencies engaged in a concerted, coordinated crackdown to evict
Occupy protests from public spaces in the last months of 2011, DHS officials
shared and coordinated strategies. For instance, the DHS District Commander in
Detroit directly communicated with a law enforcement official who was “tasked with
coming up with an exit strategy for us." After writing that he had heard
in the news that encampments were "broken up in California and
Georgia," the DHS District Commander continued, "What is the plan for
the Occupy Detroit group in Grand Circus Park? I have been reporting daily and
sending it up.” (p. 117)

The documents show a Department of Homeland
Security that appears obsessed with the question of whether any and all
protests that are being surveilled receive media attention and coverage.
Reporting within the DHS on media coverage of First Amendment protected
activities, even in the smallest places, appears to be a routine part of DHS
intelligence reports. None of the documents explain why media coverage of
peaceful demonstrations is of interest to law enforcement or concerns “homeland
security” in any way.

“This production of documents, like the FBI
documents that the PCJF received in December 2012, is a window into the nationwide
scope of DHS and FBI surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful
protestors organizing with the Occupy movement. Taken together, the two sets of
documents paint a disturbing picture of federal law enforcement agencies using
their vast power in a systematic effort to surveil and disrupt peaceful
demonstrations. The federal agencies’ actions were not because Occupy
represented a 'terrorist threat' or a 'criminal threat' but rather because it
posed a significant grassroots political challenge to the status quo,” stated
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the PCJF.

“The documents are heavily redacted and
represent, we believe, a fraction of what the government possesses. But these
documents show that federal and local law enforcement agencies, in concert with
the biggest banks on Wall Street and elsewhere in the country, conducted a
massive spying program and a large-scale disruption operation against the
Occupy movement.” stated Carl Messineo, Legal
Director of the PCJF.

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